In nacre, layer lattices of inorganic calcium carbonate alternate with layers of organic material. Chitin, collagen and various proteins ensure that the calcium carbonate grows in these defined layers. What role the proteins ...

An international team of researchers working at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has demonstrated that a bent silicon crystal can bend the paths of focused, very energetic electron beams much ...

Using ultracold atoms as a stand-in for electrons, a Rice University-based team of physicists has simulated superconducting materials and made headway on a problem that's vexed physicists for nearly three decades.

Researchers at Leiden University, the Netherlands, showed that certain crystal defects in mechanical metamaterials can harbour topologically protected motions. These mechanical states are analogues of protected electronic ...

(Phys.org)—As biotechnology and nanotechnology continue to merge, DNA-programmable methods have emerged as a way to provide unprecedented control over the assembly of nanoparticles into complex structures, including customizable ...

(Phys.org) —A trio of researchers in the Netherlands has built a "microphone" out of just a single molecule that is capable of detecting displacements as small as a single proton. In their paper published in Physical Review ...

Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. Those instructions were once printed on punch cards that fed data to mainframe computers. Today's smart phones process more data, but they still weren't built for being shoved into back pockets.

Analysis of a manganese-based crystal by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has produced the first clear picture of its molecular structure. ...

Crystal structure

In mineralogy and crystallography, a crystal structure is a unique arrangement of atoms in a crystal. A crystal structure is composed of a motif, a set of atoms arranged in a particular way, and a lattice. Motifs are located upon the points of a lattice, which is an array of points repeating periodically in three dimensions. The points can be thought of as forming identical tiny boxes, called unit cells, that fill the space of the lattice. The lengths of the edges of a unit cell and the angles between them are called the lattice parameters. The symmetry properties of the crystal are embodied in its space group. A crystal's structure and symmetry play a role in determining many of its properties, such as cleavage, electronic band structure, and optical properties.